Dejan can stop crying now- the Pirates have brought back Pitching God Karstens on a 1 year deal. I'm not a big fan of Karstens but this isn't a bad idea since the rotation is Wandy (33 years old), Burnett (35 years old), and question mark.

Happy with the Karstens deal, I wanted them to keep him earlier in the offseason.. He isn't great by any means but I think he was worth the $3.8M he was projected to get in arbitration so I think $2.5M is pretty nice. Using the injury excuse on Karstens seemed pretty dumb if they are willing to take chances on two other injury risks in Liriano/Marcum (even if the ceilings on those guys are higher).

I would think that the low cost on Karstens could allow them to bring one of those guys in. At the same time I could also see it as a sign of Liriano's injury being something that they just aren't comfortable with and want no part of combined with Marcum just not wanting to come to Pittsburgh, so they went with Karstens as the fallback. Hoping that isn't the case and the price was just right.

Yeah I let Dejan hear about it on twitter... even though I wasn't happy about the initial decision either. Turns out that a professional baseball team knows better than I do about professional baseball players

Rocco wrote:Dejan can stop crying now- the Pirates have brought back Pitching God Karstens on a 1 year deal. I'm not a big fan of Karstens but this isn't a bad idea since the rotation is Wandy (33 years old), Burnett (35 years old), and question mark.

The fake-to-3rd-throw-to-1st move that Pirates pitchers love that never ever works will likely become a balk.

BA's top 10 list for the Pirates is due today. I picture Dejan frantically rewriting his exert all through last night. Now that the Karstens non tender is no longer a point of contention, he's going to go back to the "hoka hey" and cheap ownership.

stuff and mechanical evaluations on kingham, holmes and black, three players i'm open to information on while trying to rank in the system. i'm coming up with about exactly 50 interesting prospects in the minors right now - not counting allie

Brad Hawpe is coming to Spring Training non-roster invitee. I like this move, he put up 4 consecutive 20+ home run seasons and hit over .280 in that span of 2006-2009. He sucked in 2010 and 2011 and had Tommy John surgery in 2011. This is a low risk, high reward move by the Pirates but it being the Pirates he will probably go hitless in Spring training and not make the team followed by him signing with some other team and hitting 40 homers and batting .320.